A thriller with wit and dark intent is just my cup of tea. Give it a female lead and I tend to like it even more.
 
This is the first in the Zoë Boehm series, although it would be more accurate to call them the Zoë Boehm and Sarah Tucker novels. An engaging protagonist, smart asides, plenty of intrigue and believable scenes make it a fine read.
 
The only way it falls down for me is that Herron sometimes makes hints about character or allusions to events that want to be returned to, developed or shown to be motivation, but are then left behind. An idea is sometimes introduced that could be made into a theme and then go towards tying the narrative together, but he doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity. The same goes for imagery. Down Cemetery Road was his first book and I wonder if he puts this right in later novels.
 
He’s better at working with characters who are basically decent people, possibly because he has more time for them. The baddies in this book have no saving graces and it kind of makes them into ciphers.
 
What you can’t fault is his neat, acerbic humour. By way of example: “a daytime burglary that went ‘tragically wrong’, according to the paper, as if there were some ideal template of burglary that this had failed to live up to.”

I might gripe a bit, but I’d certainly give another by Mick Herron a go. Maybe one of his Slough House “Slow Horses” books.

I imagined the book would be a journalistic depiction of rough living as witnessed by Orwell. What I hadn’t known or expected was that he had lived in these pitiful, abject conditions himself. If he did so voluntarily, he did so fully committed, at one point being unable to stump up the few pennies for a doss house and resorting to tramping. The late 1920s and early 30s were tough depression years in the cities and there many thousands living in unrelieved poverty. It might not be his finest writing, but who cares? The infernal kitchens in the bowels of the Paris hotel and characters he meets will make an impression on any reader. Orwell’s solidarity with common humanity shines through. Particularly memorable is Bozo, a destitute “screever”, or pavement artist, whose spirit and self-esteem remained intact: “if you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, I’m a free man in here’” —he tapped his forehead— “and you’re all right.”
 
There’s a remarkable bravery in this stance, because Bozo’s chances, once down on his luck, of recovering even a simple economic well-being were virtually nil. Similarly, the beggar has no hope of betterment, his or her plight is usually never their fault, and yet beggars, Orwell points out, are universally despised. Orwell reckoned it was because society considers making money a prime virtue. I suspect it is because we fear that we might descend to such an iniquitous condition ourselves. Our privilege and comfort are not guaranteed and we have no entitlement to them.
 
Orwell: “Beggars do not work, it is true, but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other, quite useless, of course—but then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And a as a social type, a beggar compares quite well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout—in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite.”